"There is no war on drugs, you can't have a war on inanimate objects, what there is is a war on drug addicts. When there is a war on drug addicts, it's very difficult to save anybody."
Gabor Mate
"What is addiction, really? It is a
sign, a signal, a symptom of distress. It is a language that tells us
about a plight that must be understood."
Alice Miller
I'm very much looking forward to
Professor David Nutt's talk – 'The Truth About Drugs', on the Isle
of Man next Monday. I wanted to put some stuff on this blog about the
drugs war, but I'm going away tomorrow so will only have time to do
this one post. I considered concentrating on the economics of the
war, but that's really shooting fish in a barrel, we established that
prohibition doesn't work (unless you're Al Capone) back in the
1920's.1 Another aspect of this that really fascinates me and makes
a farce of the whole thing, is that the same governments that prohibit
drugs are often also involved in dealing them. The CIA's role in
bringing drugs into the United States has been documented beyond doubt
for at least the past twenty years, with Congressman Ron Paul even
suggesting that this might be the number one reason why they're criminalised - 'so governments can have a revenue source to do illegal
things.' 2
The aspect of the war that most
interests and disturbs me however, is that like all wars it has a
terrible human cost. Attempting to stop people from using drugs by
making them illegal means that those who do must face some form of
penalty, usually being locked away in jail. This always
struck me as morally wrong, throwing someone in a cage for the
'crime' of ingesting a plant, but just how wrong has been illustrated
to me recently by the work of Dr. Gabor Mate. Whilst many people try
drugs, not all become addicts, it would seem some people have a
higher level of susceptibility than others. Dr. Mate's clinical
experience and research lead him to believe that the difference here
can largely be attributed to emotional disturbances resulting from
trauma in a persons history, most likely in their childhood. He goes
as far to say that not one of the most seriously addicted female
heroin users he works with in the slum area of Vancouver, wasn't sexual abused in their childhood. The 'war on drugs' is then nothing
other than a war on the most vulnerable and abused people in our society -
“The treatment implication is that if
we see addiction amongst other conditions not as a genetically
inherited disease but as a problem of brain development, then the
question we would be asking ourselves, knowing that the human brain
can develop late on in life, if the conditions are right, then the
question we would be asking ourselves is 'what conditions do people
need for their brains to develop properly, at any age.' Now, the
worst possible condition is when you stress an ostracise and
criminalise and dehumanise people, under those conditions there's no
growth whatsoever. So the war on drugs which is in fact a war on drug
addicts which is in fact a war on the most abused section of our
population from birth onwards, which is exactly the wrong thing to
engage in if you're really intent on helping people and to help
redeem them from their addictive habits.”
Gabor Mate
Dr. Mate points out that we can all
(himself included) indulge in destructive addictive behaviour to
varying degrees, be it shopping or alcohol or work etc. Not wanting
to admit to this, society points the finger of blame specifically at
those addicted to drugs as a form of scapegoating, projecting blame
onto others rather than accepting and dealing with our own issues.
There is a longer TED video, where Dr.
Mate talks about his work and his own struggles with addiction,
resulting from being born a Jew in Hungary during the Nazi invasion,
here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66cYcSak6nE
1 – This piece by Johann Hari really makes the point -
2 – Someones jut made this rather nice little film running through the history of CIA drug trafficing - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJkFZ4W4bjg
The interview where Ron Paul made these astonishing comments can be seen here -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Hl5zt3MvzE
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recovery drug addiction fight quotes
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